Verizon Wireless In-Building Distributed Antenna System Featuring ADX Series Fiber DAS By Advanced RF Technologies

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1 Verizon Wireless In-Building Distributed Antenna System Featuring ADX Series Fiber DAS By Advanced RF Technologies Venue: Hewlett Packard, Corvallis Campus 1040 NE Circle Blvd Corvallis, OR A White Paper by Verizon Wireless and Advanced RF Technologies 1 P age

2 Overview Verizon Wireless prides itself on providing our customers the best network performance in the U.S. This robust performance extends not only on the macro side but also to in-building environments, especially for our corporate customers for whom we have allocated capital expenditure budget to provide seamless coverage. One of these customers, Hewlett-Packard, had poor Verizon Wireless coverage at their facility in Corvallis, OR. We decided to enhance coverage on the floors where we found there to be insufficient macro penetration. This campus had several buildings and each building, in turn, had several floors. After conducting a survey and benchmark testing, we determined that we needed to deploy an inbuilding solution in Building 3 (Basement, Lower Floor), Building 4 (Lower Floor), and Building 5 (Lower floor). With this coverage scope in mind, the solution called for a fiber DAS as the primary active element in the system design. Verizon Wireless always carefully analyzes which fiber DAS vendor to choose for each environment, based on the features and benefits that a particular platform will afford the environment in need of coverage. For HP Corvallis, we selected ADRF as the OEM vendor to provide their ADX active fiber DAS for a number of compelling reasons, as we will elaborate below. 2 P age

3 Modularity The ADX platform is extremely modular in nature and offers a cost-effective and future-proofed way to expand to new bands very easily and with limited additional equipment. Currently, Verizon Wireless provides services on the Cellular, PCS and 700MHz bands in this region but, in the future, we expect to offer services on the AWS band as well. As such, Verizon Wireless only requested ADRF to design the DAS solution for the three existing bands, so that we only paid for what we needed. At the same time, we had peace of mind that the AWS upgrade would not only be cost effective but also it could be performed without taking the DAS off-line. ADRF designed both the ADX Head End and the Remote Units to be hot-swappable so that, when the time comes, we can add AWS modules quickly, easily, and without disrupting service. Figure I. Upgrade path to AWS 3 P age

4 RF Power At Verizon Wireless, we know that the amount of RF power needed per Remote Unit in a fiber DAS always depends on several factors. Sometimes, the building architecture comes into play. The buildings at HP Corvallis had the following characteristics: High ceilings for office spaces, large amounts of customer inventory in the form of high density and/or metallic equipment, and limited locations for placing Remotes Units and server antennas. In these types of scenarios, Verizon Wireless prefers Remote Units that can provide significant RF power, as this can facilitate long coaxial cable runs from Remote Units located in certain locations to the server antennas. The ADX platform provides both 1W and 2W options in all bands (which is especially important in the higher bands like PCS and AWS), thus providing more than sufficient RF power for any of the Remote Unit locations. After deploying the solution, we confirmed via walk testing that the system performance previously anticipated to be outstanding through ibwave modeling was indeed exceptional, as the RF output power at each of the server antennas could withstand long coaxial cable runs and still penetrate several walls and high-density equipment. Figure II. Coverage requirements achieved through high output power 4 P age

5 Test Ports Verizon Wireless has deployed thousands of similar in-building systems in the past decade. We have learned many lessons about deploying in-building DAS from these past experiences, one of which is the benefit of having a test port on the Remote Unit. If one of our DAS experiences performance issues after we have installed and commissioned it, typically the Remote Unit would need to be disconnected for testing, which would obviously cause disruption in service. In order to avoid this, a test port on the Remote Unit would be necessary. Unfortunately, we have found that most fiber DAS platforms do not have such ports for testing purposes. One of the many reasons we chose the ADX platform was that ADRF already designed and built these test ports into their Remote Units, which (if the need ever arose) would enable us to troubleshoot the solution at HP Corvallis without interrupting Verizon Wireless service for our valued customers. Figure III. Test ports on ADX Remote Units 5 P age

6 Web-GUI Verizon Wireless requires monitoring functionality in all of its in-building deployments and the ADX allowed us to do just that. The ADX features a Web-GUI as the main user interface, which can be viewed both locally as well as from a remote location. The Web-GUI resides in the network management system (ADX-H-NMS) portion of the Head End and allows us to monitor and control every element of the DAS, including every active module in the Head End and in each of the Remote Units. The robust ADX Web-GUI provides us a number of powerful benefits that made deployment relatively quick and easy: Ability to see real-time RU output power, previously commissioned levels & date commissioned Ability to see the optical losses to determine if any optical cable is faulty without actually performing the OTDR sweeps every time Ability to commission the system remotely Ability to monitor all alarms, e.g., VSWR, RF Alarms, System Alarms, Power Alarms Figure IV. Monitoring of DAS alarms via Web-GUI (ADX Web-GUI, Status Page) 6 P age

7 Gain Control Typically, there are two types of signal sources for an in-building DAS, i.e., BTS or BDA. Verizon Wireless generally determines which one to use for a project and this is dependent on several factors, such as capacity. For this HP Corvallis project, we determined that the signal source should be a BDA, which would be fed by a donor signal from a nearby tower. Sometimes, when this type of method is chosen, the signal quality provided by the DAS may suffer due to several factors, such as poor donor signal coming in, or the tower being too far away to receive uplink signals. The ADX has features that enabled us to set and modify the appropriate gain levels and attenuation levels on each Remote Unit and Head End to counter these effects. Initially, when ADRF deployed the solution at HP Corvallis and collected walk test data, they found unusually high TX power. They found the cause to be poor signal quality and, as such, were able to quickly and easily adjust the gain on the uplink path to reduce the TX power to an acceptable level. Figure V. How to adjust uplink gain (ADX Web-GUI, Control Page) 7 P age

8 Miscellaneous In addition, other features that ADRF built into the ADX platform proved extremely helpful to us and contributed to our decision to use the ADX on this HP Corvallis project, including: Requirement of only a single strand of single mode fiber to each remote allowed us to save up to 50% of time and cost in splicing and testing fiber cabling Option of choosing either a simplex or duplex input into the DAS future-proofs our investment by allowing us to change our signal source to a BTS in the future without any change in DAS Head End gear Having a GUI port at each Remote Unit to troubleshoot for two separate areas while in one location when commissioning/troubleshooting will save us significant time and manpower because we will not need Verizon Wireless personnel at both the Head End and Remote Unit simultaneously User-friendly DAS architecture and intuitive design the simple, logical configuration of the ADX made it much faster and easier for us to plug and play compared to other DAS platforms Ability to back-up and selectively restore settings for an already-optimized system will make any future potential troubleshooting faster and easier Figure VI. Simplex and duplex inputs on DAS Head End (ADX-H-RFU) 8 P age

9 Conclusion In conclusion, Verizon Wireless is proud to have chosen ADRF as the DAS OEM vendor for HP Corvallis. The overall deployment, including timely installation and commissioning, went smoothly and resulted in a very satisfied customer in Hewlett Packard (HP). With the ADRF DAS system currently performing to the highest standards of Verizon Wireless, the ADX has become an approved DAS platform in the Pacific Northwest region. 9 P age

10 Authors About Verizon Wireless Verizon Wireless is an innovative wireless communications company that connects people and businesses with the most advanced wireless technology and service available. Our company launched the nation s first 3G wireless broadband network. We were also the first tier-one wireless provider in the nation to build and operate a 4G LTE network. With 4G LTE, our customers can access the Internet and stream media faster than ever and experience their mobile world in real-time. As the nation s largest wireless company, we serve 98.2 million retail connections and operate more than 1,900 retail locations in the United States. Globally, we offer voice and data services in more than 200 destinations. Founded in 2000 as a joint venture of Verizon Wireless Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ:VZ) and Vodafone (NASDAQ, LSE: VOD), Verizon Wireless is headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J. About Advanced RF Technologies Advanced RF Technologies, Inc. ( ADRF ) is an established, leading provider of in-building equipment and services that improve wireless coverage and capacity for the largest service providers and enterprise customers around the world. ADRF s product suite encompasses active systems, including RF repeaters, distributed antenna systems, small cells, antennas, and passive components. ADRF offers complete, custom-designed turnkey solutions for wireless carriers, enterprise and public safety entities. We leverage our substantial wireless industry experience and in-building expertise to give our customers a seamless experience. For more information, please visit 10 P age